Abstract The Alikayasi Canyon Member of the Tekir Formation occurs in a thick sequence of deep-water slope deposits on the northern margin and center of the lower-middle Miocene Maras foreland basin in eastern Turkey. The canyon was one of at least four major sediment-bypass systems that sourced from a narrow shelf otherwise occupied by thick, coeval carbonate reefs. What remains of the source hinterland indicates that thick fan deltas propagated directly into the heads of the deep-water canyons that characterize these bypass systems. The Alikayasi Canyon is exposed as an almost completely exhumed sediment body in an area of sparse vegetation, where the contemporaneous shelf margin is still largely intact, and it represents the youngest of these four systems. It forms a 7-km (4-mi)-long, up to 300-m (984-ft)-high, and up to 1-km (0.6-mi)-wide sediment body, dissected once by a river, which is now drowned by an artificial lake behind the Menzelet Dam. The exposure is complete apart from a 1.5 km (0.9 mi) section through its most proximal reaches, and a 2 km (1.2 mi) section in its most distal reaches where it feeds into a series of sandy lobes. The canyon fill is characterized by stratified conglomerates and pebbly sandstones in its lower part, stratified conglomerates and braid-plain-style conglomerates and pebbly sandstones in its middle part, and steeply dipping fan-delta conglomerate clinoforms in its upper part. The axial area of the canyon is dominated by these coarse-grained deposits, although locally remnants of intracanyon shales, in the form of floating rafts, shale blocks, and clasts,

Abstract The Tinker channel is exposed in a series of dip and strike sections to the east of Hasret Mountain, near Elazig, in eastern Turkey ( Figure 1A ). The exposures are part of the exhumed northern margin of the northeast-to-southwest-oriented Elazig Basin, which has almost continuous exposures for 75 km (46 mi) in the high eastern Anatolian badlands ( Cronin et al., 2005 ). The outcrop allows study of a series of time-equivalent stratigraphic intervals through a clastic system that propagated from the elevated middle Eocene hinterlands and narrow shelves to the north, toward the deep basin axis to the south and east. The Kirkgecit Formation is interpreted as a predominantly low net-to-gross, deep-water, slope-environment succession, which has infilled a topographically irregular basin margin, created during basin formation in a rapidly subsiding back-arc setting. Incised and entrenched slope-channel complexes contain most of the coarser grained, deep-water clastic sediment within the Kirkgecit Formation. The Tinker channel ( Cronin et al., 2000b ) is one of a series of such channel-complex exposures that allow detailed examination of the fill and overbank stratigraphic architecture. The main Tinker channel exposures are to the east of Hasret Mountain, 15 km (9 mi) east of the city of Elazig. The channel is located 3 km (1.8 mi) downdip of the inferred contemporaneous slope break (Karadag, Figure IB). It is the most proximal channel of a series of four slope-channel complexes ( Figure 1C ) that occur within the same stratigraphic interval. The Tinker channel was documented by Cronin et al. (2000b) and the architecture and chronology of the enveloping deep-water slope succession by Cronin et al. (2000a).

Abstract A series of entrenched, deep-water slope-channel complexes form a planform tributary network of conduits on the northern slope of the Eocene-Oligocene back-arc Elazig Basin in eastern Turkey (Figures 1—3). The lower part (60%) of the channel complex fills are characterized by coarse-grained sediments and the upper 40% by heterolithic facies ( Figure 4 ). The heterolithic facies drape a synsedimentary faulting phase of activity that saw a reactivation of the channel complexes after filling. The lower part of this facies, which thickens over the channel-complex axes, is dominated by slumped shales and local, thin-bedded turbidite sandstones and siltstones. The upper part comprises sheet and lenticular pebbly sandstones and sandstones, interbedded with rippled sandstones and siltstones, associated with channelized geometries ( Figure 5 A, B). This interval is also characterized by lateral accretion surfaces, where beds have an asymptotic and shingling character, an association with sedimentary structures such as trough cross-bedding, and where paleocurrents suggest sinuosity of the channel elements. The sinuous channels are up to 3 m (10 ft) thick and 10-40 m (33-131 ft) wide. Interleaving shales have abundant and diverse deep-water and shelfal ichnofacies, and deep-water benthic/plank-tonic foraminiferal assemblage ratios. The sand-prone portions of these sinuous channel bodies are dislocated and usually confined to the accretionary margins and channel floors. The channel elements can be tracked for 7 km (4 mi) in a series of sections above four separate, entrenched, deep-water slope-channel complexes. These late-stage sinuous channel elements and their association with larger, longer-lived, and persistent (i.e., entrenched), deep-water slope-channel complexes are documented for the Main channel.